CHERCHEZ LA FEMME: FEMINISM AND THE ACADEMY

Are you at university? Been there, done that? Teach in one? Hoping to go one day? Women were officially allowed to enrol in university in Australia as early as 1880 and they now outnumber men as students. It might be a rite of passage for many but the barriers to higher education are still firmly in place for many women.

That said, the academy is still a pretty big part of Australian cultural life, and the way women are treated and represented within it is pretty interesting to feminists. From feminist theory and gender critiques developed by academics, to the employment and promotion of women within universities, to the experience of female students on campus and gender biases in curriculum, there are a ton of problems for women in the academy.

But it’s not all bad news!

Universities are often the spaces in which people discover feminism, activism and oppositional gender politics. There’s massive potential in that kind of collectivism, and we also need to talk about the same mechanisms being used to exclude and punish people who don’t conform. How can we harness the power of higher education to advance the feminist cause? What about the toxic masculinity on campus, for students and staff? How is feminism meaningfully expressed within the academy – as an industry, a sector, a cultural sphere? Where are the faultlines and opportunities and challenges for feminist academics?

We thought it was time to have this chat about Feminism and the Academy, led by the amazing Jessamy Gleeson, who is wrapping up her PhD on feminist activism, and she’s joined by an impressive lineup of femmo panelists!